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Friday, July 15, 2016

This has been, if you've been reading the blog for a while, an odd semester.

Back in March I was diagnosed with cancer, which, as I mentioned in The Temerity of a Tumor, might well require an interruption in this blog. And well it did. Fortunately it was a type of cancer that is not likely to require such an interruption--or early termination--in my life itself.

After experiencing nearly every drug-related side effect, including one very rare one that messed with my vision (severe photophobia) and another with my hearing (which seems to be temporary) it was pretty clear I wasn't going to be up to my usual schedule. And what good days there were I spent updating folks about my condition on a special cancer-related blog. This didn't leave much time or energy for this one, although there have been a few entries between now and then.

Typically about this time of the year I take time off of this blog for the summer months, and, considering I am just beginning to feel normal again after what might, if I'm lucky be my last treatment, it could be a chance to get back into the blog. Or it could be a chance to rest.

I'm choosing to rest. Also, we've moved in the middle of all this, and I need to start looking for jobs and meeting people and resuming life in my new environment.

As I write this, I haven't had the tests yet that will hopefully pronounce me cured of this, so my struggle isn't actually over. I'll know that in a few weeks. In the meantime, I am updating the homepage of pianonoise.com itself, every Tuesday, with a different recording and several articles. And new recordings continue to come in every week, through the 1st of August, when I'll be taking a break from them, too. They all date from before the cancer, but hadn't been released yet. That's what can be gained from working ahead.

Anyhow, I hope you are in good health and are having a pleasant summer (or winter, depending on where you are). Regardless of what happens in a few weeks, I plan to see you in the fall, most likely around the 1st of October. Let's enjoy this thing called music while we live and breathe.

Friday, July 8, 2016

There are two images to take note of on the back
of Steve Shoemakers' new book, "A Sin a Week" (Mayhaven Publishing). One shows a heavily bearded, stern looking preacher who
could have led an 1890s temperance rally, railing against the
dangers of demon rum. The other shows him, less bearded, sitting at
home, eating an entire bowl of frosting, licking the spoon. Does he
preach? Sometimes. Does he have a wicked sense of humor? Sometimes.
And there is plenty of subtle wisdom in between.

A good example of that is the poem that begins the book,
"Lie." Steve's titles are usually what we can safely assume are the
particular sins being addressed. What we can't always safely assume
is whether these are things to avoid or not. As the prologue puts
it, these are [poems] "for folks with the inclination to sin
and ability to do wrong, but who
have run out of bad ideas." Surely not, Steve? A preacher actually
encouraging us to go wrong? But in the opening strophes we get a kind of
apologia for sin. And not the cloven hoofed, oh come on,
everybody's doing it variety of defense, or some version of
I've got it coming to me, which we could all see coming a mile away,
and know with our superior moral compasses just had to be something
good people wouldn't do, but a much more sinister, snake-in-the-garden kind of argument. Riffs on the theme: this will
actually be good for other people, not just for selfish you. If you
want to love your neighbor, and who shouldn't, wouldn't you want to
lie if it will make everybody feel better about themselves? We lose
our innocence only later in the poem when we realize that that could also mean
everybody else is telling little white lies to us, too. That just
isn't right!

A more telling adumbration of this
goodness-of-sin argument is the justification of greed in the 7th poem. The
speaker beings by complaining that somebody else got something they
should have, too, but inversely ("I don't want too much, I just want
my fair share.") It is hard not to hear the voice of Lucy van Pelt
exclaiming "All I want is what's coming to me! All I want is my fair
share!" But then Steve adds one word to take it out of its
self-centered orbit: "Equality." It's all about justice, now, isn't
it? Are you sure that's a bad thing? Or is it just self-justifying rhetoric? C. S.
Lewis said that he was never less sure about a doctrine of the faith
than after he had just defended it in his own words and thoughts.

Not that all the poems are subtle. When it comes
to themes like televangelists, ambitious politicians, or conformity,
the poems are solidly in the don't-try-this-at-home camp. The author
doesn't need to work very hard to have this reader nodding along
comfortably, and they do at least provide a contrast with the other
poems, which, although they aren't in themselves the more
interesting of the bunch, do keep us off balance as to whether or
not we really want to try, or not try, a particular sin. Being
uncertain about the advisability of a given sin encourages us to
think.

The book doesn't actually call these selections
"poems," as the author has pointed out in a radio interview, and
often they neither rhyme, nor show the kind of metric discipline one
might expect from a poem. Some of
them have a mostly prosey quality. But there are times when a poetic
technique shines through, and despite what you may have assumed in
English class, this can shed light on the poem's meaning, as well.
Poem nine is called "Follow" and involves a curious rhyming
technique. Twice the poem devolves to near slogans. "Have faith. Do
not pass or brake" it exhorts. Only faith doesn't quite rhyme with
brake, does it? (it's a vowel rhyme, I guess). And later "Follow the
leader. Peace comes from trust and order." Another pair
(leader/order) that doesn't quite rhyme. Which makes us just
uncomfortable enough to wonder, should we really be following this
leader after all? It seems like a smooth ride--slogans always do,
and it is often because they rhyme. But in the realm of the
not-quite, we have to pause. And, of course, the sarcasm makes it a
bit more obvious. This is supposed to be a sin, but if it wasn't at
least a little inviting, why the need to warn away from it? Or have the
curiosity to indulge?

Which brings up the work of illustrator T. Brian
Kelly. Often Kelly can simply take something from the poem literally
to make it humorous, as he does here with the last line ("decisions
pass as easily as fence posts") showing a line of people, heads
buried in newspapers, sitting side-saddle on a fence in a long line.
Generally he follows something from the poem
pretty closely, which is often startling enough, unless the poem
itself takes an obvious line on whether or not we should view this
sin with moral outrage or more ambiguity. A few of the sins even
double as religious practices. But then, how we react to the sins
may themselves be sins. In one poem, Steve describes a neighbor's
car in detail, without apparent jealousy, until the last line, when
he sniffs in regard to the high powered headlights that his neighbor
leaves on even during the day "when the sun is shining you can't
even see them." There are several poems about cars, and one of my
favorite lines in the book is the exhortation that concludes the
preceding poem to "shoot the tires relentlessly. " It's the
relentlessly that gets me. Often it's just that one word that
turns a poem into something great.

Visitors to Steve's Facebook page know about his
penchant for limericks, which makes it all the more curious that he
saves the form for the last poem in the collection. The limerick
trips along in its rhythmically hypnotic way, perfect for traipsing
along happily on the road to hell (and, happily, more book sales!),
which is, after all, paved with good intentions. It might take a
preacher to get us to think about where we're going and whether or
not we ought to change course
before we regret it. Most preachers would attack the problem with
righteous fury, fulminating against a long list of things not to do.
Steve's method is to get down and wade in there with us. With humor,
insight, and a lot of questioning, these poems have more to them
than meets the initial eye. Steve has been diagnosed with pancreatic
cancer and does not have a lot of time with us. He has complained
that this group of poems is "not much for a life's work." But
besides the decades of pastoral care, the lives he's touched, the
good he's done in his community, and countless things that one
person won't even know, this slender volume, finally published after
25 years, contains a lot more than a word count. A good poem
presents a lot in concentrated form. These poems are short--rarely
more than a page (in fact, only one requires you to turn one;
another is less than a word long). But even some of our greatest poets
(T. S. Eliot comes to mind) published very little. Although epics
have been written in meter, just as often the reader is left with
few words and much to think about, inviting continual engagement
with the same poem or poems. Send for a copy--you'll want to keep it
on a near shelf. For future reference. Just in case you can't kick
the sin thing after a mere 12 months--or you don't want to.

A Sin a week is published by Mayhaven
publishing, and is available from
mayhavenpubishing.com
or by writing to Mayhaven publishing, P. O, Box 557, Mahomet, IL
61853